The invention relates to a disk-changing unit, in particular for CD disks, comprising a tower housing, at least one interchangeable disk magazine, at least one disk drive, and if applicable, a disk-loading/ejecting drawer having respectively the same outside dimensions and which can be interchanged, replaced or added in the manner of modules by inserting or removing them from respective receiving bays, comprising a transporting device for moving a disk between the disk magazine, the disk drive and, if applicable, the disk loading/ejecting drawer, an operating device and a computer-controlled control unit.
Such disk-changing units, which as a rule have several disk magazines and/or disk drives, are used in particular in data processing systems and computer systems. Tower housings are frequently used for computers that accommodate, among other things, disk drives, interface cards, slide-in printed circuit board modules, hard disks and a CD disk drive for reading and/or recording of information from or onto a CD disk.
EP 0 439 483 B1 discloses a disk playback unit with two interchangeable, opposite arranged disk magazines, which are fitted with disk holders holding respectively one disk and are positioned in horizontal receiving compartments. A transporting device that can be moved in a stacking direction of the disk magazines moves a desired CD disk with the associated disk holder back and forth between the receiving compartment of the respective disk magazine and a playback unit.
DE 39 31 715 A1 furthermore discloses a disk playback unit with an interchangeable disk magazine, which contains CD disks in receiving compartments that are arranged one above the other. The disk magazine, which is inserted in the manner of a drawer into the disk playback unit housing, is secured in position inside the housing with a latching device.
A CD disk changing unit of the aforementioned type is also known from the not previously published DE 195 19 343 A1, which has several disk drives inside a tower housing that are installed fixedly and cannot be interchanged, as well as several disk magazines that can be inserted one above the other and one beside the other. A transporting device that moves up and down is arranged between the disk magazines and the disk drives. In addition, a disk loading/ejecting drawer is provided on the front of the tower housing.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,845 discloses a disk-changing unit with a tower housing, at least one interchangeable disk magazine, at least one interchangeable disk magazine, at least one disk drive and, if applicable, one disk loading/ejecting drawer, which have respectively the same outside dimensions and can be interchanged or added in the manner of modules by inserting them or removing them from respective receiving bays.
All of the aforementioned disk changing units or disk playback units have the disadvantage of a rigid arrangement of the disk drives and the disk loading/ejecting drawer inside the tower housing. The disk magazines only are arranged interchangeably, wherein a disk magazine can be replaced only by another one. Such disk changing units or disk playback units consequently have a limited use or they are difficult to handle. However, for many applications it may be necessary for the disk changing unit to have fewer disk magazines and instead have more disk drives or have fewer disk drives and more disk magazines. Frequently, this depends on the amount of data to be filed or information to be retrieved from a data file.